Clocking in at nearly 14 minutes, [artist id="3061469"]Lady Gaga[/artist]'s "Marry the Night" video, directed by the Mother Monster herself, is a music video within a short film.

Gaga teased earlier that the clip would be about the worst day of her life, and it certainly touches on some nefarious stuff. With references to everything from "Fame" and "Black Swan" to "The Bell Jar," the video is a sweeping look into Gaga's psyche.

The video opens with Gaga being rolled through a clinic. As her monologue wraps up, a pale, bruised Gaga is in bed, being cared for by the same nurse who delivered her, still recovering from an unknown procedure (the only clue to what surgery Gaga may have gotten is when she's told "no intimacy for two weeks"). With tears streaming down her face, Gaga tells the nurse (who refers to her as "morphine princess"), "I'm gonna be a star. You know why? Because I have nothing left to lose."

As the camera pulls back, the other patients and nurses in the room go about their lives and a piano plays while a mysterious laugh acts as the soundtrack to the dramatic, poignant scene.

Next, the viewer is taken to the stage, where a glamorous ballerina Gaga is performing. Then, she's back at her apartment, being tucked into bed by a long-haired man. Gaga lies topless in her apartment and gets a call from her director, arguing, "But, I'm an artist. What do you mean give up?"

She begins destroying her apartment manically. Next, she's dying her hair and singing the opening lines of "Marry the Night" acoustically. "You may say I lost everything," Gaga says in a voice-over, as she's seen decked out in a bedazzled denim outfit and heels, joking, "But I still had my BeDazzler and I had a lot of patches, shiny ones from M&J Trimming, so I wreaked havoc on some old denim. And I did what any girl would do — I did it all over again." (It should be noted that Gaga is very reminiscent of "Desperately Seeking Susan"-era Madonna in this scene.)

Next, a full moon shines down on Gaga, who is on the hood of a car wearing all-black pleather. She's sliding into the car using the sunroof when the song finally kicks in at about nine minutes in. The car explodes and Gaga is outside proudly claiming that she'll marry the night as she dances around.

Now she's at a dance studio, doing her best "Fame" routine, rolling around and stretching, clearly reinventing herself from the ballerina she once was to a pop backup dancer.

As she dances in the studio and on the street, the video also cuts to Gaga naked in a bathtub at her apartment. The video focuses the most on Gaga's dancing, with a majority of the actual music-video portion featuring several big dance numbers. As she dances on the street, the moments leading up to her breakdown are played out: She's fighting, she's setting cars on fire, she's naked, she's dancing. As the video comes to a close, a message handwritten on Gaga's hand is revealed, reading, "Interscope Records; Hollywood, CA; 4 p.m."

Whatever Gaga did to reinvent herself seemed to work. She became a pop star. The final shot is Gaga, decked out on couture, surrounded by flames in a spacey outfit before it all goes black.

"Marry the Night" is the latest single from Gaga's Grammy-nominated Born This Way album. It was filmed in New York City in October and marks the first time Gaga has directed a video solo. While the clip is an homage to her pre-fame roots, the song is also a tribute to the Big Apple.